Honey Moon (36 page)

"Listen to me, Lilly. You're putting some kind of sick interpretation on something that's perfectly normal. I've bathed those girls on and off since they were babies. That's what Rachel was talking about. Ask her. No, we'll ask her together."

He moved toward her, ready to drag her back to her house and his daughters if necessary, but she jumped up from the couch and the fear on her face stopped him.

Her teeth were bared, her too-thin face fierce. "You're not going to get within a mile of her. I'm warning you right now, Eric. Stay away from those girls or I'll have you thrown in jail so fast your head will spin.

I may not be much of a mother, but I'll do whatever I have to do to keep them safe. If I think you're posing the slightest threat to them, I'll go to the authorities. I will. I mean it. I'll keep quiet as long as you stay away, but the moment you come near those girls, you'll find this filthy perversion of yours smeared over every paper in the country."

She fled from the room.

"Lilly!" He started to go after her, but then he made himself stop. He had to pull himself together and think.

His cigarette pack was empty. Crushing it in his fist, he threw it across the room toward the fireplace.

The conviction he had seen in Lilly's eyes chilled him. She truly believed what she was saying. But how could she believe he was capable of something so obscene when she knew how much he loved those girls? He began pacing the floor, trying to remember everything he had ever done with his daughters, but it was so impossible, so ridiculous.

Gradually, he grew calmer. He had to stop reacting emotionally and think logically. This was another one of Lilly's trips off the deep end, and he should be able to prove that without any difficulty. The whole thing was so patently absurd. Fathers all over the country bathed their children and took them into bed when they were frightened. His lawyer would straighten it out in no time.

* * *

"I've been taking a crash course in child sexual abuse since your phone call, Eric, and I'm afraid this may not be quite as easy as you think."

Mike Longacre leaned forward over his desk. He was in his late thirties, but thinning hair and a tendency toward pudginess made him look older. He had been Eric's lawyer through the divorce, and the men had developed a distant sort of friendship. They'd done some deep-sea fishing together, played racquetball, but they had little else in common.

Eric shot up from his chair and thrust one hand back through his hair. He hadn't had any sleep; he was running on cigarettes and adrenaline. "What do you mean it's not easy? The whole thing is incredible. I would no more harm my daughters than I'd cut off my arm. Lilly's paranoia is the danger to them, not me."

"Sexual abuse of children is a tricky area."

"Are you telling me you actually think Lilly can make this stick? I told you what she said. She obviously twisted some innocent remarks Rachel made.

There's nothing more to it."

"I understand. I'm simply advising you that we have to tread carefully here.

Sexual abuse of children is the one area of the law where the accused has no rights. You're guilty until proven innocent. Remember that a sickening number of these charges are true, and the court's primary concern is protecting the children. Countless fathers are molesting their daughters every day."

"But I'm not one of them! My God, my children don't need protection from me.

Goddamnit, Mike, I want this thing stopped before it goes any farther."

The lawyer toyed with his gold pen. "Let me tell you a little about what can happen here. Everyone used to believe that children never lied about sexual abuse, but we've discovered that they can be coached. Let's say the mother has gotten a lousy divorce settlement. Her husband is driving a BMW and she can't pay her grocery bill. Maybe he wants to challenge the custody arrangement, or he isn't making his child support payments."

"None of this applies to Lilly. I've given her everything she's wanted."

Mike held up his hand. "For whatever reason, women frequently feel powerless in divorce cases. Maybe the kid says something that starts her thinking. She begins asking questions. 'Daddy touched you here, didn't he?' She pops a piece of candy in the kid's mouth, and when the kid says no, she hands out another piece of candy. 'Are you sure? Now think hard.' The kid is getting all this extra attention and begins to fabricate to keep Mom happy. There have even been cases where mothers have threatened to kill themselves if the children don't say what she tells them."

"Lilly wouldn't do that. She's not a monster. Jesus, she loves the girls."

There was a moment of silence in the office. "Then what's going on here, Eric?"

Eric swallowed hard and looked up at the ceiling. "I don't know. God help me, I don't know."

He turned back to the attorney, struck by a new thought. "Rachel's a hardheaded little girl. Even though she's just turned five, I don't know how much she could be influenced. We'll hire the best psychiatrists in the field. Let them talk to her."

"In theory, that's a good idea, but in practice it backfires all the time."

"I don't see how. Rachel's well adjusted. She's articulate. She's—"

"She's also a child. Listen to me, Eric. We're not dealing with an exact science.

Most of the professionals who specialize in child abuse cases are well trained and competent, but it's still a relatively new discipline. Even the most capable make mistakes in judgment. There have been a lot of scary cases. For example, a little girl is given an anatomically correct male doll. She's never seen anything like this before, and she pulls on its penis. Bingo. The overzealous expert takes this as a sign of abuse. I'm not exaggerating. These things happen all the time, and there aren't any guarantees. I'm sorry. I'd like to be able to reassure you that a psychiatric exam of Rachel would exonerate you, but I simply can't. The truth is, you'll be playing Russian roulette if you press the issue."

Mike gave him a slow, steady gaze. "You also have to remember that Rebecca would be questioned. I imagine she could be influenced quite easily."

Eric squeezed his eyes shut, his flicker of hope dying. His sweet little Becca would do anything or say anything if she thought it would please.

Mike's chair squeaked as he shifted his weight. "Before you even think about challenging Lilly, you need to understand the consequences. Once she goes public with her accusations, everything happens quickly and none of it is good.

The girls will be taken away from you while the investigation goes on."

"How can that happen? This is America. Don't I have any rights?"

"It's as I said. In child abuse cases you're guilty until proven innocent. The system has to work that way for protection, and the best you can hope for while the investigation goes on is supervised visitation. The investigations themselves are supposed to be kept confidential, but the girls' teachers will be questioned, friends and neighbors, all the hired help. Anyone with half a brain will be able to figure out what's going on, and since you're involved, I can guarantee it'll hit the papers long before the courts get hold of it. I don't think I need to elaborate on what being accused of child molestation will do to your career as a leading man. The public will put up with a lot, but—"

"I don't give a shit about my career!"

"You don't mean that." He held up his hand and went on. "The girls will be forced to undergo medical examinations. A series of them if this drags on."

Eric felt sick. How could he put his babies through something like that? How could he hurt them that way? They were innocents. When they were born, he had thought he had broken the cycle, but once again it had caught him up. Why did he always have to hurt the innocents?

"The examinations will prove they haven't been abused," he said.

"Maybe in an ideal world. The truth of the matter is that in the majority of cases, there isn't any physical evidence. Most sexual abuse involves fondling or oral copulation. An intact hymen is no proof that a child hasn't been molested."

Eric felt as if the walls of the office were closing in on him. He hadn't believed

—He hadn't even let himself consider the possibility that he might lose his daughters. Any minute now he'd wake up, and this would only be a nightmare.

The lawyer shook his head. "The minute these charges become public, a man has a loaded gun pointed at his head. For someone who's a celebrity, it's even worse. On the positive side, I've seen some fathers go bankrupt defending themselves in these cases, and you don't have to worry about that."

Pain and frustration made Eric's voice sharp. "Is that the best you can do for hope? That I can afford to defend myself? What the fuck kind of comfort is that?"

Longacre stiffened. "It probably wasn't wise for you to have taken your daughters into bed in the first place."

Eric's rage exploded. He vaulted across the desk and grabbed the attorney by the collar of his shirt. "You son of a___"

"Eric!"

As he drew back his fist, the alarm in Longacre's eyes stopped him, and he forced himself to let go.

Mike gasped for breath. "You fool."

Eric was trembling as he pulled away. "I'm sorry. I—"

Unable to say more, he fled from the office and drove frantically to Lilly's house. He had to get to his children. But when he arrived at the house, everything was locked and the curtains were drawn.

He found the gardener working by the pool in the back. The man said Lilly had left the country. And she had taken the girls with her.

* * *

Three weeks later Eric flew to Paris, where his team of private investigators had located Lilly and the girls. As he stared blindly out the window of the taxi that was moving through the traffic on the quai de la Tournelle, he knew that the last weeks had been the longest in his life. He had smoked too much, drunk too much, and, in the wake of his Oscar triumph, been unable to concentrate on his work.

As the taxi crossed the pont de la Toumelle to the tiny He Saint-Louis that sat in the center of the Seine, the driver kept grinning at Eric in his rearview mirror. Eric had long ago accepted the fact that there were few places left in the world where his face wasn't recognized. He looked off to his left toward the neighboring He de la Cite's famous landmark, but Notre-Dame's slender spire and flying buttresses barely registered in his mind.

The He Saint-Louis sat between Paris's Right and Left banks where it formed the period to the He de la Cite's exclamation mark. The island was one of Paris's most exclusive and expensive neighborhoods and had housed a number of luminaries over the years, including Chagall and James Jones as well as current residents such as Baron Guy de Rothschild and Madame Georges Pompidou.

The taxi let Eric out in front of the address the investigators had given him, a seventeenth-century town house located on the fashionable quai d'Orleans.

Across the Seine the Left Bank glimmered in the late morning light. As Eric paid the fare, he looked up toward the second floor windows and saw the draperies move. Lilly had been watching for him.

As desperately as he yearned to see his daughters, he knew the situation was too explosive for him to give in to the urge to arrive unexpectedly, and so he had called Lilly early that morning. At first she had refused to see him, but when she realized he was going to come whether she wanted him to or not, she had agreed to meet him at eleven when both girls would be gone.

The town house was built of limestone, and the intricately carved wooden front door was enameled a rich shade of blue. White shutters, their top halves open to reveal pots of trailing pink ivy geraniums, graced the long, narrow windows.

He was about to lift the knocker when the door swung open and Lilly stepped out.

She looked tired and drawn, even thinner than he remembered, with faint purple smudges lodging in the hollows beneath her eyes. "I warned you to stay away," she said, hugging her arms beneath her silk blouse, although the morning was warm.

"We have to talk."

He saw a group of tourists coming toward them and turned his head away. The last thing he needed to do while he was trying to reclaim his life was sign autographs. He snatched a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of his white cotton dress shirt and shoved them on. "It's too public here. Can't we go inside?"

"I don't want you near their things."

The cruelty of her comment filled him with rage, and he wanted to strike her.

Instead, he grasped her upper arm so hard that she winced and pulled her along the tree-lined quay toward a bench that faced

the river.

The setting was idyllic. Tall poplars cast dappled shadows over the walk. A fisherman stood on the banks near a graceful iron light pole. A pair of lovers walked by, their bodies so intertwined it was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended.

She sat down on the iron bench and began clenching and unclenching her hands. He remained standing and stared blindly out toward the water. For the rest of his life, he would hate this beautiful city.

"I'm not giving in to your threats any longer, Lilly. I'm going public. I've decided to take my chances in court."

"You can't do that!" she cried.

"Just watch me."

He looked down at her. Her fingernails had been bitten so far down that the cuticles were bloody.

She gasped for breath as if she had been running. "The publicity will ruin your career."

"I don't care anymore!" he exclaimed. "My career doesn't mean anything without my children."

"What's the matter?" she sneered. "Can't you find anybody else who'll give you your sexual thrills?"

He grabbed her. She gasped, trying to pull away from him by cowering into the bench. His rage was a blinding white light, and he knew that if he didn't let her go, he would hurt her.

With a dark oath, he dropped her arm and whipped off his sunglasses. They snapped in his hands, and

he hurled them into the Seine. "God damn you!"

"I won't let you near them!" she cried, jumping up from the bench. "I'll do whatever I have to. If you go to court or do anything to try to get them back, I'll send them underground."